Seattle Schools Community Forum

I do wish I had attended the Washington Policy Center breakfast last week. One reason is the speaker was Dr. Andres Alonso, the head of Baltimore Schools. He sounds like an interesting guy and I would have liked to hear him in person. However, a couple of readers (Greg is one), pointed out that there was coverage of his speech in this week's Crosscut . What is interesting is he seems the non-firebreathing, anti-union, anti-parent Michelle Rhee. He came into an incredibly poor situation: Only 35 percent of Baltimore’s students received high-school diplomas the year before Alonso arrived. Proficiency levels as measured by standardized tests were in the cellar. Over nine years the district lost 25,000 students, dwindling from 106,540 in 1999 to 81,284 in 2008. In the same period the district gained 1,000 staff, Alonso said. With costs rising despite continuing enrollment declines, "baseline aid from the state to the city had doubled.... It was clearly an organization ...

There are two new SPS schools on this year's state list for low achievement; AS#1 and RBHS. Now SPS, trying to put a good spin on it, makes it sound like this is a great thing for them to be able to apply for state grants (ranging from $50k to $2M a year over 3 years starting next fall). Sealth is also on the list but SPS is NOT going to apply for a grant for them" because the school is well into implementation of a plan to ensure a high‐achieving school. “While additional funding would be helpful, we do not want to disrupt the momentum that has been created.” Again I say...what? There is a chance for money to help a school that is still getting its footing and is going to be transitioning to a joint campus with a middle school and we aren't applying for the funds? How is more money "disrupting the momentum?" Districts that participate have to choose from four federally designated intervention models and SPS, in 2010, chose "Transformation." This ...

( Update: from the LA Times : the California State Board of Education is asking the Attorney General to investigate parent complaints of misconduct over the petition drive at McKinley Elementary in Compton. Boy, this is one to sort out and really hurts Parent Revolution. Thank you to Phyllis Fletcher at KUOW for this heads up.) Okay, so we have the Parent Revolution . This is a group grown out passage of a law called the Parent Trigger in California that allows 51% of parents at a school (that is under certain criteria) to force a district to transform a school under a turnaround strategy that the parents choose. This sounds good, right? (What's interesting is that a school that is ID'ed as a "persistently lowest achieving school" is NOT eligible but only ones eligible for certain corrective actions.) The parents have five interesting choices: charter conversion, turnaround, closure, transformation and bargaining power. There is nuance to each but basical...